Uk politics

Thursday

Brendan O’Neill

The media and political elite need to stop treating the electorate like dogs

There are many grating phrases in modern British politics. ‘Best practice.’ ‘Fit for purpose.’ ‘Let me explain’ (just bloody well explain!). And that tendency of Labour politicians to preface pretty much everything they say with a schoolmarmish ‘Look’, as in ‘Look here’. As in: ‘You donuts know nothing, so I am going to put you straight.’ But even more grating than those, sat at the top of the pile of temperature-raising sayings, is ‘dog-whistle’. Everyone’s talking about ‘dog-whistle politics’. It has become the media and chattering classes’ favourite putdown of politicians they don’t like: to accuse them of indulging in dog-whistle antics, of making an ugly shrill noise — that

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Five things to watch for during tonight’s debate

1) Can Natalie Bennett do enough to spark another Green surge? After Natalie Bennett’s infamous ‘brain fade’ the Green surge faded away. The media stopped giving the Greens the attention they had been and without the oxygen of publicity, support for the party fell away; this morning’s YouGov poll has the Greens on 4%, their lowest score since October. But tonight offers Bennett a chance to get her party back into the election frame. If she can deliver a few good answers and the odd zinger, that would be enough to get the media—and, then, the voters—to take a second look at her and the Greens. 2) Will Leanne Wood attack

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The challenge for insurgents and ex-insurgents in tonight’s TV debate

The party leaders have been reflecting on the challenges facing them ahead of tonight’s TV debates. Nigel Farage said this morning that he wished there weren’t so many of them taking part, something the audience may also feel by the end of tonight’s two-hour extravaganza. But the Ukip leader is probably peeved by the sheer number of party leaders because it makes it more difficult for him to appear to be the only exciting force disrupting British politics. His advantage is that he’s the only one on the Right. John Cleese or not, Nick Clegg does have one of the biggest challenges of any of the leaders participating. He needs

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg’s picture caption election

Mock Nick Clegg all you like, but he is taking an impressively pragmatic approach to this General Election. The Deputy Prime Minister knows that he might not get as much coverage as the main parties or the insurgent parties if he just says things (though already announcing a lot of your manifesto and charging hacks £750 a day for the pleasure of hanging out in your disturbingly Austin Powers-esque bus might make that a tad more difficult anyway). So to ensure that he does get a modicum of coverage each day, he’s having a picture caption election. On Monday, it was hedgehogs in Solihull. Yesterday he had that selfie with Joey

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron’s curiously sanitised Christianity

David Cameron has written a rather interesting piece for Premier Christianity magazine on his faith and the meaning of Easter. I use the word ‘interesting’ advisedly and in the sense that an aged relative might deploy it when regarding some new fangled Christmas present that has a touch screen. The final two paragraphs are particularly interesting: ‘So I end my argument with this: I hope everyone can share in the belief of trying to lift people up rather than count people out. Those values and principles are not the exclusive preserve of one faith or religion. They are something I hope everyone in our country believes. ‘That after all is the

Mark Gettleson

A Cabinet of losers?

Here’s an interesting factoid. We have gone the longest time since any serving Cabinet Minister has lost their seat… ever. Seven were booted out in 1997, most famously Defence Secretary Michael Portillo in Enfield Southgate – an experience shared by just 32 people since 1900. To some extent, MPs from marginals may be less likely to reach the Cabinet: they are by definition more likely to be newly elected and are forced to spend vast amounts of time and energy campaigning in their constituency, from which a Cabinet role can serve as a distraction. 2015 seems likely to end this streak, with five names around the current Cabinet table looking

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Should Labour dismiss a letter from 100 business chiefs?

The Labour reaction today to the Telegraph’s high-volume splash on 100 business leaders warning about the dangers of a Labour government has largely been along the lines of ‘how interesting, and tomorrow will you tell us about the Pope’s theology?’ The coverage of the letter, which has the mark of Tory co-chair Lord Feldman, has certainly created a rather stark contrast to the party’s own announcement that it will give workers on zero hours contracts a legal right to request proper hours after 12 weeks. Labour likes this contrast. The letter says: Dear Sirs, We run some of the leading businesses in the UK. We believe this Conservative-led Government has

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: Nick Clegg enlists Basil Fawlty to play Farage in TV debate rehearsals

Tomorrow’s TV debate between the seven party leaders is the chance for the insurgent parties to muscle up to the mainstream leaders, make them look tired and old, and in doing so gain more supporters. But the leader with the biggest challenge is Nick Clegg, the insurgent in the 2010 debates, now coming to the end of five years in government. How does he fight Farage and boost the Lib Dem brand? The Lib Dem leader has been rehearsing with colleagues playing his rivals like all the other politicians, but I understand that his preparations for the debate have a rather more stellar quality to them than his opponents’ rehearsals. John

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

The confusion of Ukip’s immigration policy

Immigration is a pretty important driver for voters who turn to Ukip. So you would have imagined that the party might have spent a while really making sure that its own policy on the matter is crystal clear. This morning in Dover, Nigel Farage said ‘I’m saying a net level of about 30,000 a year is roughly what we had for 50 years from 1950 almost until the turn of the century’. This seemed to be a bit of an about-turn from the Ukip leader’s decision earlier this month to ditch the 50,000 cap on the number of migrants arriving in the UK each year. Farage dropped the 50,000 target

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Westminster sneers at Joey Essex because it is a closed shop of know-it-alls

Well, at least Joey Essex has given bored pundits something to talk about today. He pitched up at a press conference with Nick Clegg, and took a selfie with the Deputy Prime Minister, which will certainly add to Clegg’s collection of useful props he hopes might win him a few more votes. The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones says this is an ‘image of the crisis in our political system’. Perhaps it does make Clegg appear rather desperate. But much of the tone has been sneering at a figure so apparently stupid as Essex wandering about in Westminster at all. I should declare an interest as I’m one of the journalists who

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron: Je ne regrette rien

David Cameron doesn’t regret the Lansley reforms that have done so much to damage any chance that the Tories could be trusted again by voters on the NHS. That’s what he told the Today programme this morning, saying: ‘The reforms were important and they were right… Of course [I stand by the changes]. If you’re saying to me: “Would you rather have 20,000 more bureaucrats and 9,000 fewer doctors?” Of course not.’ listen to ‘Today: David Cameron defends hostile campaign focus on Labour and Ed Miliband’ on audioBoom It’s difficult to find many Tories who privately share his view. Many who still think the spirit of the reforms were right

Monday

Harry Cole

Nick Clegg’s women problem

Nick Clegg ain’t done yet, and as if to prove how deadly serious he is about winning this election, the Deputy Prime Minister visited a hedgehog sanctuary on his first campaign stop. Probably his least prickly public encounter since 2010. The Liberal Democrats have focussed their initial onslaught focusing on women, with Monday’s Guardian reporting that it was ‘his mission to win over female voters in a number of his party’s target constituencies’: ‘Party strategists believe that winning over the female vote will be crucial to their chances of success across a range of key battleground constituencies.’ All of which is a little embarrassing when you consider just how poor

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

‘There’s no such thing as a safe seat’: Douglas Carswell explains his absence from Ukip launch

Ukip launched its general election campaign poster today. Nigel Farage was there, both in person and in print, with a very large image of his face emblazoned across the new poster. Mark Reckless was there, posing for photos with the party’s ‘pledge card’ (although unless he has very big pockets or an enormous wallet, the one pictured is probably a poster for people’s windows rather than the real pledge card). And here is our pledge card pic.twitter.com/9o5ArIW5Um — Mark Reckless (@MarkReckless) March 30, 2015 But Reckless isn’t the party’s only MP, is he? Where was Douglas Carswell? Carswell was back in his constituency campaigning today, and received a barrage of

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

All aboard the election battle bus

Now that David Cameron and Nick Clegg have had their final audiences with the Queen at Buckingham Palace, they can get on the road. Their shiny battle buses are waiting to accompany them on the campaign trail. The Lib Dems are charging hacks who want to clamber aboard their bus £750 per person per day, which is rather a lot for a bus journey, even if it does take you from seat to seat. You’d expect a champagne breakfast personally served by Tim Farron every morning for that fee. Still, the Tories have only invited certain people on their bus, and those certain people seem to be broadcast journalists rather

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron: It is me or Miliband

It is rare for politicians to mention their opponents by name – don’t give them the publicity is the normal approach. But standing in Downing Street just now to announce the start of the election campaign, David Cameron pointed at the door of Number 10 and said ‘The next Prime Minister walking through that door will be me or Ed Miliband’. There’s a method to the Tory approach. They believe that one of their trump cards in this election is that the public just can’t see Ed Miliband as Prime Minister. They want to force voters to confront the choice that one of Miliband or Cameron will be Prime Minister

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Miliband in the middle as TV debate line-up set

The order in which the party leaders will stand in this Thursday’s televised debate has been set as follows: Natalie Bennett, Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage, Ed Miliband, Leanne Wood, Nicola Sturgeon and David Cameron. So Ed Miliband will be in the middle, and David Cameron and Nigel Farage will be sufficiently far apart from one another to thwart Ukip’s ambition for their leader to land a good run of blows on Cameron. Still, Farage is next to Miliband, which means he’ll have a chance to land some blows on the leader of a party he’s trying to take votes from too. The standing order does matter a little, but what

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will we learn anything from this election campaign?

Will we learn anything from any of the parties in this election campaign? And will the polls tell us anything either? Yesterday Labour was excited that it had a four-point lead over the Tories in a YouGov poll. Today the Tories are excited that they’re four points ahead in a ComRes poll. The polls are certainly moving, but only like a pendulum, swinging back and forth, at present. Meanwhile Labour’s frontbenchers are struggling to explain how they’d cut the deficit, the Tories don’t want to explain how they’d cut £12bn from welfare, and the Lib Dems are still explaining why they do/don’t want a referendum on Britain’s membership of the

Sunday

Sebastian Payne

Alex Salmond invades the stage and appeals to the cultish side of the SNP

Alex Salmond has been oddly absent from the SNP’s spring conference this weekend. Although the former First Minister’s only official positions are as the MSP for Aberdeenshire East and the PPC for Gordon, it’s puzzling why one of the party’s most prominent figures wasn’t given a prime speaking slot. But that didn’t stop him from trying to steal the show. A small stage was setup in the hall for a Q&A session to promote his new book at lunchtime today. But as soon as Salmond arrived, a combination of sound issues and the ecstatic crowd led him to give up on the side stage and invade the main platform. As

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Lucy Powell confirms: debt-addicted Labour has no plan to balance the books

‘You aren’t listening to what I’m saying,’ said a rather rattled Lucy Powell, Labour’s election chief, whom the party put up for BBC Sunday Politics today. I suspect that, by now, she’ll have wished that we weren’t listening. Because in a commendable moment of candour, she admitted that the Labour Party intends to keep debt rising should it win power – and has no real deficit reduction strategy. Ms Powell dispensed with Ed Balls tricksy language and told it how it is. Here she is, talking to BBC Sunday Politics (11 mins in, after complaining about a ‘Paxo-style interview’). ‘Andrew Neil: You would borrow more, wouldn’t you? Andrew Neil: To bridge the deficit

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Stakes raised ahead of Thursday night’s debate

The stakes have been raised, at least psychologically, for Thursday night’s debate. Today’s YouGov poll has Labour four points ahead, in contrast to a two point Tory lead in their last survey. This is being seen in Westminster as a Paxman bounce for Miliband. If this Labour leads is still in place at the end of the Easter weekend, Tory nerves will begin to fray. Thursday’s debate will be a crowded affair with seven leaders on stage. Despite it being a two hour debate, there’ll only be time for four questions. As I say in the Mail On Sunday, the debate will almost certainly turn into Cameron versus the rest as they